Cell-free skin graft heals chronic leg ulcers

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A new type of skin graft produced by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT)
Tissue Services has healed the chronic leg ulcers of more than half of
patients involved in the first trial.

The new product, known as dCELL Human Dermis, is made from skin
donated by deceased tissue donors and processed to remove all the
donor cells using Tissue Regenix’ dCELL technology.

The product is not rejected by the patients’ immune system. It
maintains the essential structure of normal skin and serves as an
ideal scaffold for the patients’ cells to migrate into and
regenerate living, functional skin tissue.

Lower limb ulcers, which are often secondary to other conditions
such as poor circulation and diabetes, are a common age-related
condition which is increasing in frequency with an aging and
increasingly unfit population.

Professor John Kearney, NHS
Blood and Transplant Tissue ServicesHead of Research and
Development said: “All of these wounds are painful, debilitating and
reduce the patient’s quality of life. In some cases they can lead to
the patient requiring full or partial amputation. The study showed
that dCELL Human Dermis treatment is capable of completely healing
chronic leg ulcers in some patients and decreases the size of the
wound in others. This evidence offers hope that the treatment will
benefit patients in a clinical setting in future.

“Care and treatment of chronic leg ulcers is estimated to consume
1% of the NHS total budget¹. Our research and development of a
treatment that can heal these wounds may lead to better use of NHS
resources and greatly improve patients’ quality of life.”

Antony Odell, Managing Director Tissue Regenix, said: “This dCELL
Dermis clinical treatment has the potential to help many patients
and address the £400 million annual bill that the NHS pays to treat
chronic wounds of the lower leg. Research firm Kalorama estimates
the global market for chronic and acute wound care could be worth
$21 billion by 2015 (from $16.8 billion in 2012). The successful
trial and development of this NHSBT Dermis treatment is a critical
part of our ongoing plans to commercialise treatments developed
using our dCELL technology.”

The trial was undertaken at
University Hospital South Manchester. Further studies in
collaboration with Tissue Regenix are planned for later this year.
The NHSBT dCELL Human Dermis graft will be available from NHSBT
Tissue Services from Summer 2013.